Sister Sophie Swenson has been called to serve in the California San Fernando mission! She reports July 1st 2015 and will return home January of 2017!

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Monday, October 26, 2015

Hello Family,

We are truly blessed to have the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives! I cannot thank my heavenly father enough for blessing me with it! This week i learned a lot about Grace and Gods love for us! I was thinking a lot about why God lets us go through hard things, and if he is a God of love why does he make us suffer through things... As i was pondering this question i started to think about a track coach and how they make you run a lot and in the moment we are like oh my gosh why do they hate me so much and why are they making me run so many miles, why can't i just run 1 mile and call it good, that would really make me happy! but its truly because they love us so much that they make us run a lot of miles, they want us to become better, they see our potential and they see that running those miles can help us win that race! I was thinking also about teachers and the teachers i had in the past that made me study hard and gave me a lot of homework, i would get angry and be like uhh why and didn't really see the importance but now looking back i am grateful for them because i was actually able to learn something and it has come in useful, but with the teachers that let us do whatever and goof off i loved them in the moment and thought it was great but i realized that i didn't learn one thing from them... We can relate this to our heavenly father and how he makes us go through things so that we can earn experience and grow! He makes us go through hard things because he loves us! we would never be able to become like him if we weren't able to experience the blessings of the atonement and we would never turn to him if we didn't experience hard times! sorry if that doesn't make to much sense but it sounded a lot better in my head haha :)

Anyways I'm just really grateful for the challenges that i face because i know it is helping me become a better person and making me more fit to live in gods kingdom again someday :) Also as i was pondering my scripture for this week 2 nephi 31:20 about persevering and enduring to the end i came across this talk by Kevin W. Pearson, called "Stay by the tree" it talks about how enduring to the end is essential to life! it says "Once we enter into covenants with god, there is no going back, giving in, giving up, and giving out are not options." i love that so much! We have covenanted that we would endure trials, that we would stay true to his commandments and try our best each day to give our all and do our best! And as we give our all each day we increase our faith! :)

This week was pretty good! we found 5 new investigators! We meet a hindu family at knock out that invited us in and we were able to teach them about the restoration. they invited us to their prayer room to pray with them, which was really cool! They like veiled our faces and everything haha it was interesting but a cool experience :)

on wednesday we had zone conference! it was 9 hours long... but it was really good! we learned a lot about increasing our faith and the importance of working with members :) I can't wait to be home so i can be a better member for the missionaries! i wish i would have been more involved in referring my non member friends and teaching them more about the gospel and inviting them to activities!

Thursday we were teaching one of our new investigators and we were trying so hard to find a member to be there at their lesson and we couldn't find one so we just showed up to this persons house to teach them and there was no girl there so we had to have it outside and while we were teaching a member just walked by and was like hey can i join you, it was so crazy! the lord is truly in the details of our lives and is so aware of our needs and will just work everything out if we do our best! :)

on Sunday kenny was confirmed! its truly amazing seeing the light just come into their lives! :)

well i hope you are all doing well! :) have a wonderful week! and have a Happy Halloween :)

Love you!!!!

Sister swenson!

I can't wait til Halloween is over, people get WAY into here, and it's creepy!

Our Brazilian friend, who made us Brazilian food. I think I gained 20 pounds..